From what I've read recently, Georgia Bell loves running and is a pretty fair 800 meter competitor. She also has the same coach as Keely Hodgkinson. Perhaps going to Cal and getting lost in the wilderness for a lot of years improved her attitude. I don't wish that on KH, though.
I think the odds of Keely enrolling at Cal are pretty low.
I didn’t like training much as it’s usually either fairly boring or fairly painful but LOVED racing and the sense of accomplishment, experiences and friendships it brought me. Not that weird really.
She said "running itself is horrible, let’s be honest".
She was referring to running for both training and racing as being horrible
She seems to believe any aspect of the physical activity of running is horrible.
For her, running seems to be a means to an end, not an end in itself.
She can have her opinion, and she obviously is getting what she wants from running, but I believe she seems to be missing out on the positive feelings many runners experience while running.
Many people find that the physical act of running is an end in itself.
They experience the runner's high. Pleasurable feelings due to the release of endorphins. The meditative trance-like hyper-focused state of being in the moment. The positive kinesthetic sense of flow, power, speed, rhythm and movement. Run for Fun.
When a popular Olympic champion says the sport/activity she does is horrible, it's not a good look for our sport.
Reminds me of what some say about running, "My sport is your sport's punishment".
I ran 4x200m and 2x400m hard on the track yesterday. I liked part of it but was really at the limit on some. Imagining doing this all year, year after years - and likely much more at the limit than me - I can truly see it. There is a beautiful documentary about swedish and Dutch top Olympians from the 2000s or so, including high jumper Holm, detailing how they ruined their bodies. I forgot the name, but still vividly remember how after doing hills, a female runner just pukes hard - a regular occurrence for her. Hard to imagine this is "fun". all that said, being able to turn something as difficult as this into a love of process is surely something to aspire to. Yet we may not want to judge people who can't do so. Jakob makes rather similar statements, although seeing his history, that is not surprising.
A lot of people love competing or the benefitsof running but don't like the actual time spent out there.
I'm quite the opposite, I often think while I'm running about how this is great and how I'm so lucky to be doing this. Even 5 reps into my 6x1k at 5k pace.
800 is not like running road races. It's 2 minutes of do or die. I see her point. It must be quite stressful too knowing you have to hit those times in training or you gonna lose 2 seconds. I believe this is also the reason why Athing really doesn't dig 'running' either.
She said "running itself is horrible, let’s be honest".
She was referring to running for both training and racing as being horrible
She seems to believe any aspect of the physical activity of running is horrible.
For her, running seems to be a means to an end, not an end in itself.
She can have her opinion, and she obviously is getting what she wants from running, but I believe she seems to be missing out on the positive feelings many runners experience while running.
Many people find that the physical act of running is an end in itself.
They experience the runner's high. Pleasurable feelings due to the release of endorphins. The meditative trance-like hyper-focused state of being in the moment. The positive kinesthetic sense of flow, power, speed, rhythm and movement. Run for Fun.
When a popular Olympic champion says the sport/activity she does is horrible, it's not a good look for our sport.
Reminds me of what some say about running, "My sport is your sport's punishment".
I have never met an 800m specialist who describes the racing and training as "fun". For me personally, it is by far the most painful event on the track. I was grateful that I only had to run it when there was a 4x800m at the meet. Single-handedly getting my team buried so deep that our anchor had zero chance to score certainly wasn't "fun".